<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Way to a Mech's Spark (Is Through His Fuel Tank) by Trinary</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23412070">The Way to a Mech's Spark (Is Through His Fuel Tank)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trinary/pseuds/Trinary'>Trinary</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alt-Mode Sexual Interfacing, Feeding Kink, Gay Robots, M/M, Mid-Air Refueling, Size Kink, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Weight Gain (sort of), but only because Starscream is being an idiot, self-starvation, slight dubcon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 08:20:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,613</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23412070</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trinary/pseuds/Trinary</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Starscream and Skyfire set off on their first Academy mission, and Starscream doesn’t consider the logistics of fuel until much, much too late. Skyfire isn’t keeping it in cubes—it’s in his auxiliary tanks, and there’s only one way to get it out. Starscream’s plating heats just thinking of it. He knows he can’t ask without embarrassing himself.</p><p>He can make the whole trip without refueling, right?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Skyfire/Starscream (Transformers)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>200</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Kinks in the Wires (A free 18+ Transformers weird kinks fanzine)</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Way to a Mech's Spark (Is Through His Fuel Tank)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the Kinks In The Wires TF Zine! Please enjoy while you shelter from (gestures vaguely at 2020) all of that.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream plans their first Academy mission meticulously: the equipment, the supplies, the route. He charts Skyfire’s cargo space and plots their maximum range to the mechanometer. Securing their project grant took vorns, bribes, and too many nights without recharge, and they have exoplanets to explore, dissertations to write, and well-deserved fame and fortune to be collected upon their triumphant return. Slag him if it won’t be <em>perfect.</em> </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He doesn’t consider the logistics of fuel until much, much too late.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“What do you mean you’re only carrying twenty-six cubes?” Starscream panics. They’re barely two decacycles out in the vast black, Cybertron a distant glittering pinprick amongst half a trillion others. “Skyfire, that’s hardly enough to last to the next solar system! We need to turn around. You were supposed to be carrying all the energon! What were you thinking?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“No, no. It’s fine!” Skyfire’s inappropriate laughter rings over the comms. Starscream bristles. Does Skyfire think sabotaging their mission before it’s even begun is <em>funny?</em> “The cubes are extras. I had a little spare room next to the subspace automapper.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You just said—”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Cubes take up too much space.” Skyfire glides on sedately, the shadow of his massive wingspan blocking the light of the nearest orphan sun. Their size difference is drastic enough in rootmode, but in alt Skyfire is five times Starscream’s breadth, plating folded around hollows, big enough to walk around inside. “It’s in my auxiliary tanks.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">
    <em>In his—?</em>
  </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream cuts the comms just in time to keep Skyfire from hearing his undignified choking noise. It’s in Skyfire’s auxiliary tanks because <em>of course it is</em>. It’s logical, is the worst part; Starscream would’ve made the same choice were he a high-capacity shuttleframe. Flightframes of all shapes are built to keep their flock in the air, whether by probe-and-drogue or a simple buddy siphon. Even more so shuttles, made to support a crew, with tanks big enough to sustain them both on a several-vorn round trip.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream’s thrusters light as he pulls ahead on the flimsy excuse of scouting, Skyfire’s questioning pings ignored. Only when the signal degrades to the hiss of background radiation does he let himself coast. Still Skyfire trails in his wake, gleaming hull unmissable. Starscream will have to turn back eventually. There’s no such thing as hiding out here.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He can’t let Skyfire fuel him. He just can’t.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">How had Skyfire filled all that extra space, anyway? Had he spent all cycle drinking energon by mouth or had someone hooked a line to his secondary fueling port? What kind of refueling mechanism does a shuttle even <em>have?</em> Are there retractable lines in his wingtips, enough to feed a trine all at once? Or maybe a fast-fueling boom nestled in his underbelly, its telescopic shaft waiting to sink into Starscream’s dorsal port and lock in place as Skyfire pumps him full of hot—</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"><em>Anyway</em>.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">This is supposed to be a scientific expedition. It’s supposed to be <em>professional</em>. How can he maintain that if Skyfire sees him reduced to a moaning mess like some kind of pervert? Refueling isn’t even sexy outside of stupid grounder-made fetish vids! It’s just eating with extra steps!</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He won’t ask Skyfire for fuel. That’s final.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream takes inventory of his own small cargo bay. He’s squeezed a few cubes of his own between the datapads and his newly installed deep space telemetry setup. It isn’t much, but his tanks are still almost full, and surely they’ll find raw energon on their journey. He can ration it out. It will be fine. He definitely doesn’t need to talk to Skyfire.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It isn’t fine.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Four planets and three quarters of a vorn later, they haven’t found energon yet. Running on fumes is as miserable as he remembers, except worse. Plush academy living has made him soft. Starscream has gotten too used to a full tank to ignore his growing cramps. With each passing cycle, his rations grow smaller. He’s tired and irritable and <em>ravenous</em> and it’s hard to block out the complaints of his redlining gauges; harder still when he could fill them in an instant, if only he could ask without humiliating himself.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream kicks a rock vindictively and watches it bounce across the nameless planet’s surface. It splashes into an alkaline lake of deepest viridian, its bank crowded close with spindly fungal trees.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Cheer up,” Skyfire says, mistaking Starscream’s foul mood for their lack of mission results. “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream would like it better if he wasn’t forever flushing spores out of his vents. “It’s gooey.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“It’s alive.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“That’s what I said.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream nudges another rock halfheartedly, then takes a sample of moss. It looks just like every other bit of moss on this planet. He can’t quite bring himself to be angry with Skyfire’s boundless optimism. He should feel the same. This is what he’s always wanted, isn’t it? And he’s ruining it for himself. He ruins it every time Skyfire asks, more and more concernedly, whether it hasn’t been a while since he last fueled, and wouldn’t he like to?</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Each time it’s more difficult to refuse. Scraping along on dregs is better than dying of embarrassment. That’s what he tells himself, but it’s getting harder to believe.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It’s all Skyfire’s fault, anyway. If he wasn’t so pit-slagging <em>huge</em> and <em>efficient</em> and <em>sexy</em> with his big stupid hands and handsome face and thighs big enough to crush Starscream’s head between them…</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Starscream?” Skyfire asks.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream startles and nearly drops his sample capsule. He realizes Skyfire’s been talking for a while. “What?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Are you feeling all right?” Skyfire frowns. “You’ve been awfully quiet lately.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I’m fine.” Starscream tucks the capsule away. It takes two tries. He dismisses the ever-present warnings in his HUD viciously.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Skyfire catches Starscream’s hand between his own. “Your hands are shaking!”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream tries to snatch his hand back. “I said I’m fine!”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“And your optics are so pale! Starscream, have you been fueling at all?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Of course I have!”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Skyfire frowns at him, all big sad eyes and earnest worry. Starscream can’t bear it.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Skyfire squeezes his hand tighter. “I know how much cargo space you have, Starscream. It isn’t much, and you haven’t let me fuel you once. You must be nearly depleted. It’s a little… <em>Intimate</em>, but I promise you’ll feel so much better on full tanks.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream’s resolve weakens. Maybe he should give in, get it over with, and hope Skyfire doesn’t notice how even the idea makes Starscream’s core burn and his spark swell.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Skyfire squeezes Starscream’s hand again, gentle despite those massive paws. “Let me fill you, Starscream.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream goes hot all over, panics, and blasts off into the stratosphere.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Starscream!” Skyfire calls, lost in the wind and the roar of engines. Starscream barely hears, half-transformed and going full burn. Skyfire switches to comms and comes through regrettably loud and clear. “Where are you going? Come back!”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> But Starscream is all mindless speed, atmosphere screaming over his wings, every inch of his plating crawling with raw charge that won’t dissipate. He’d be a liar if he said hunger was all he’d been suppressing. He can’t do this. He <em>can’t</em>. Starscream would rather die than admit to Skyfire how much he gets off on the thought of routine mid-air refueling, Skyfire’s form dwarfing Starscream’s as his boom slides into his slick channel and leaves him no choice but to—<em>augh</em>, why can’t he stop <em>thinking</em> about it?</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Skyfire’s ponderous bulk rises behind Starscream, the bass thunder of his engines shaking the sky. He’ll never win any races, but that isn’t what he’s for. Skyfire was built for endurance. The shape of him bursting through the clouds inspires a Primal sort of awe, vortexes swirling from his wingtips, his chassis blinding white in the unobstructed sun. He’s magnificent, a leftover hero from the age of the thirteen. For a dazzled moment, Starscream considers letting Skyfire catch him.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You can’t have more than a quarter tank left,” Skyfire comms him. “What are you thinking? If you try to break orbit you could knock yourself into stasis!”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream drives himself further, faster, higher and higher until the last frigid wisps of atmosphere fall away, until the planet is a glass marble on an inky backdrop, until he’s weightless and free. He doesn’t have to admit anything to anyone. He can fly forever. The faster he goes, the less he has to think.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream realizes too late the giddy thrill is lightheadedness. His fuel gauge dips below twenty percent. All the warnings he’d force-closed come roaring back, blaring and inescapable. His wingtips go cold. It takes a moment to work out that his body has deemed internal heating nonessential, and as he tries to turn it back on, he realizes he isn’t so weightless as he’d thought.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The planet’s gravity well closes its fist on him and pulls.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream’s overtaxed engines whine, then scream. He barely moves. As Starscream struggles, Skyfire shrugs off gravity like oil. He rises stately and shining on a plume of fire as if the laws of physics have no choice but to bend; he closes in on Starscream, and Starscream has sudden sympathy for the glitchmice hunted by turbofoxes back home. Never mind refueling, he feels like <em>he’s</em> about to be the meal. His head swims as he throttles his engines to maximum. It hardly buys him a hundred mechanometers free of the planet’s pull.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Why are you doing this?” Skyfire scolds. “Why won’t you just let me fuel you? There’s no point in holding out!”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Leave me alone, Skyfire!”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I don’t understand.” Skyfire’s voice softens to uncertainty. “I thought we were friends. Are you angry with me? Did I do something wrong?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It would be so easy to say yes. To leave Skyfire hesitant and hurt as Starscream escapes with his dignity intact, retreats to the planet below, pulls out his last hoarded energon cube and… What? What will he do? Down those last precious mouthfuls and go right back to starving? Come back like nothing happened?</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He can’t keep doing this: logistically, physically, emotionally. He’s exhausted. Skyfire is one of the few good people he knows, and the thought of his big sad optics fills Starscream with twisting guilt. Why can’t he get over himself? Why can’t he let Skyfire refuel him like a normal person? What is <em>wrong</em> with him, and why can’t he let Skyfire hold him close and stuff him full and <em>Primus, why are his interface protocols trying to come online this is the </em>worst<em> time</em>—</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Darkness falls over him like a shadow over the sun. Skyfire has caught up, and a thrill runs through Starscream at how thoroughly Skyfire dwarfs him. There aren’t many frametypes that can make a warframe feel like a minibot.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I’m not angry,” Starscream says.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Then what?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I just,” Starscream says, all his words betraying him, “I—I just—”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He never says what <em>he’s just</em>. Emergency conservation protocols shut down his comms, and he cuts off in a burst of static. Everything is cold. He can’t feel his wings, his readouts scrambled, his visual field glitching. That’s… That’s bad, he’s pretty sure it’s bad, but it’s so hard to <em>think</em>.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">His engine fails. Gravity’s grip does not. Slowly, so slowly, he begins to fall.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Skyfire matches course. The re-entry armor that plates his underbelly shifts and folds back to expose a black fuel boom, stark against white plating. Starscream’s rear telemetry picks it out in lurid detail: fin-tipped, glistening, and longer than Starscream is tall. His hysterical processor is sure he’s about to be skewered, even if he knows it doesn’t work that way. His valve gives an inappropriate throb at the idea. Meanwhile, his fuel-hungry body spirals open the dorsal port behind his cockpit. The chill of hard vacuum on sensitive components makes him shudder. The boom’s tip finds his dorsal port and pushes inside. Starscream’s internal clamps lock on greedily. For a moment there’s nothing, then energon begins to flow.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream’s shut-down comms are all that save him from Skyfire overhearing his desperate moan. Fuel floods his main tank and overflows to fill his auxiliaries as his readouts tick from red to green. He’s been running on fumes for so long he forgot how good it felt to be full. Plain midgrade rushes through his lines, heady as engex, and as his engines come back to life, it’s all he can do to keep flying in a straight line.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">His valve clenches on nothing, his swollen spike trapped in the depths of his altmode’s chassis. Rising charge shudders all through him. If Starscream cranes his cameras the right way he sees where Skyfire’s boom meets his body, that dark length disappearing into him, his clamps locked obscenely around it as it vibrates with the volume of fuel being pumped in. Its guidance fins nearly brush his frame. Starscream would draw it deeper if he could, its thickness sinking into him as he grows so heavy he can hardly fly. His fuel gauge ticks up and up and all too soon the flow tapers; he’s warm and sated and dazed with it, too far gone to remember why he’d been running from this in the first place.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Skyfire begins uncoupling procedures. Starscream’s internal locks clamp tighter.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Skyfire yelps as they’re both dragged off course for a few startled moments. Starscream’s frame creaks, yanked around by his dorsal port. “Starscream, what are you <em>doing?</em>”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I can’t let go!” Starscream says. He doesn’t know when his comms came back online and doesn’t care. “Wait, slag you, just give me a klik!”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You wouldn’t let me fuel you and now you won’t let me stop? We have to uncouple, you’re at eighty-six percent. I can’t give you any more or you’ll have trouble landing.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It’s true: a seeker is graceful, but a fully fueled seeker is a heavy, wallowing thing. There’s a reason they don’t do it often. Starscream feels every bit of it in his sluggish maneuvering, ungainly after the lightness of his near-starvation. Each flight adjustment is harder than he expects. The sense of warm well-being it provides wars with his raging charge. He squirms, his useless array providing nothing but frustration. He wonders if Skyfire could fill him so full he couldn’t fly at all.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">In the utmost betrayal, stray charge crackles across his plating to sting Skyfire’s fuel boom.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The plunge from arousal into horrified mortification is dizzying. It washes over Starscream in an icy wave. He tries frantically to disengage his locks but they won’t retract, his body having concluded that he’s an idiot who doesn’t feed himself and shouldn’t be listened to.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You’re enjoying this,” Skyfire accuses.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Ridiculous,” Starscream stutters. “It must have been static electricity, stray atmospheric charge—”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Have you been avoiding refueling this entire time because you had a kink and you were <em>embarrassed?</em>”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“No! And I don’t have a kink! I never thought twice about refueling until suddenly I had no choice but to rely on your stupid huge auxiliary tanks!”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“So you’ve been thinking about it a lot?” Skyfire asks, tone suddenly coy. Starscream doesn’t trust it. Skyfire can be wicked when he chooses. “Thinking about me chasing you down and stuffing you full?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“No, that’s ridiculous—<em>oh</em>.” Starscream makes an inarticulate, choked-off moan as Skyfire restarts the flow of energon at a trickle. His entire frame seems alight, his array throbbing for a touch that won’t come. “Oh, you absolute fragger, <em>more!</em>”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Are you going to make me do this every time?” Skyfire asks, far too collected as he tops up Starscream’s tanks at a torturous lazy drip. “Because I can, you know. It’s for your own good. I won't let you starve for your own pride.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You’re the worst lab partner,” Starscream pants. “I hate you so much.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You know, if you’d just asked earlier, we could have skipped straight to this. I can feel you clenched around the boom, trying to suck up every drop.” Skyfire’s voice comes through the comms low and rough, more seductive than Starscream had thought he could sound. If anything, the flow gets slower. Eighty-eight ticks up to eighty-nine. “Is your valve just as tight? I’d love to find out.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Just how big is Skyfire’s spike? It must be proportional to the rest of him, and even in rootmode Skyfire’s hands are big enough to close around Starscream’s thighs. The image of him bending Starscream double, spike sinking into Starscream’s straining valve inch by inch, springs into Starscream’s processor fully formed. His valve clenches helplessly. Worst (best?) of all, Skyfire keeps <em>talking</em> as if he’s been thinking about this for a long time, too. All the things he’d like to do to Starscream, all the things he wants Starscream to do to <em>him</em>. So much for their professional relationship.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream’s spark feels ready to burst its confines. His tank readouts tick past ninety-five percent. He gasps as his lines swell to accommodate the pressure and suddenly everything’s so much more sensitive, his trapped spike and node squeezed by his own internals, maddening friction pulsing in time with his fuel pump.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Just <em>finish</em> it already,” Starscream gasps. It’s a command. He refuses to beg. Skyfire’s chuckle tells Starscream he sees right through it.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I don’t know, Starscream. Are you sure you can take it?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Yes, you pit-spawned scraplet fragger! Just <em>d—</em>”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He cuts off with a cry as Skyfire takes him at his word. Full flow hits his systems. Starscream shoots from ninety-five to ninety-nine percent in a dizzying rush, overpressure warnings flashing like glitter in his HUD, his frame creaking under the strain. He doesn’t care. He’s never been so full. Starscream shrieks and overloads untouched, electricity arcing from his frame, pink lubricant crystallizing in the frigid vacuum where it seeps from his panel seams. The pressure doesn’t relent. He overloads again and again, displays glitching, processor crashing, his whole being focused on his clamps and the boom and his tanks as they hit one hundred percent.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Emergency failsafes disengage his locks. The sensation of the boom’s tip slipping out of him overloads him one last time, and he screams as half his systems short. It seems to go on forever. As darkness claims him, he decides that if he’s managed to overload himself to death, it was worth it.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream comes online lying on moss. He squints at the setting sun. For a klik he can’t think how he got here, or why he’s in rootmode. The last thing he remembers is being in orbit, and Skyfire had… </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"><em>Oh</em>.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream begins to sit up, groans, and flops back down. After decivorns of starvation, he’s heavy as a tanker and just as graceful. His tanks still read one hundred percent, but now that he isn’t lost in the throes of arousal, what he feels is mostly swollen and uncomfortable. He never wants to move again.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Skyfire’s shadow falls across him. Starscream looks up reluctantly to find that dreadfully earnest face overhead.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Oh good,” Skyfire says. “You’re awake. I carried you down from orbit; I wasn’t sure you could make the landing.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream puts his hands over his face and groans louder. He’s pretty sure Skyfire is right, which makes it worse. He can’t believe he did… <em>Any</em> of that. It must have been hunger addling his mind. Worst of all, he doesn’t regret it, not one bit, and if Skyfire popped his boom right here he knows he’d be on hands and knees with his tongue circling its black rim.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">His array gives a weak little pulse at the idea. Starscream realizes belatedly that he’s still streaked with lubricant in unlikely places. It’s probably all over his internals, drying bright and sticky.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Primus, he doesn’t even care.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Are you all right?” Skyfire asks.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I think I need to lie here while my circuits reset.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Skyfire sits beside him. “That was a stupid thing you did.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Fragging in orbit?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“No, starving yourself!” He pokes Starscream in the side. “How are we supposed to explore the galaxy together if you can’t even ask me to fuel you?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream turns his face away. “I thought you’d…”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“What, refuse? Because you <em>liked</em> it too much?” Skyfire sounds affronted, but when Starscream looks at him, Skyfire has turned to face the golden horizon. “Do you think so little of me?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“No!” Starscream heaves himself upright with an effort. “I only—you’re right, it’s a stupid kink but I couldn’t get it out of my head and I thought if you knew, you’d think I was…” He cuts himself off, not wanting to voice any of the things he’d called himself for not being able to stop his runaway mind. For fantasizing about his partner. “I didn’t want you to hate me.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Skyfire’s expression softens. “I could never hate you, Starscream.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starscream bites his lip and looks at his clenched fists on the tops of his thighs. He can’t bring himself to speak.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Sometimes you’re a stupid glitch, but I don’t hate you,” Skyfire teases. “Look, come here.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Skyfire pulls Starscream’s heavy frame into his lap. Even at triple his usual weight, Skyfire has no trouble maneuvering him. He settles Starscream into place beneath his chin, both of them watching the sun as it kisses the horizon.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I want to see a million sunsets with you, on a million worlds,” Skyfire says. “Whether that’s as friends, partners, or something else. We'll discover amazing things, Starscream. I just know it. But you have to trust me. Do you trust me?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It’s easier said than done. Starscream has never trusted anyone but himself, but here—with the sky, and the sunset, and Skyfire’s arms warm around his sated frame—he thinks he could learn.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>